To put much the same as the above in different words. Assume that small favourable variations are preserved more commonly, in proportion to their numbers, than is perhaps the case, and assume that considerable variations occur more rarely than they probably do occur, how account for any variation at all? “Natural selection” cannot _create_ the smallest variation unless it acts through perception of its mode of operation, recognised inarticulately, but none the less clearly, by the creature varying. “Natural selection” operates on what it finds, and not on what it has made. Animals that have been wise and lucky live longer and breed more than others less wise and lucky. Assuredly. The wise and lucky animals transmit their wisdom and luck. Assuredly. They add to their powers, and diverge into widely different directions. Assuredly. What is the cause of this? Surely the fact that they were capable of feeling needs, and that they differed in their needs and manner of gratifying them, and that they continued to live in successive generations, rather than the fact that when lucky and wise they thrived and bred more descendants. This last is an accessory hardly less important for the _development_ of species than the fact of the continuation of life at all; but it is an accessory of much the same kind as this, for if animals continue to live at all, they must live _in some way_, and will find that there are good ways and bad ways of living. An animal which discovers the good way will gradually develop further powers, and so species will get further and further apart; but the origin of this is to be looked for, not in the power which decides whether this or that way was good, but in the cause which determines the creature, consciously or unconsciously, to try this or that way. But Mr. Darwin might say that this is not a fair way of stating the issue. He might say, “You beg the question; you assume that there is an inherent tendency in animals towards progressive development, whereas I say that there is no good evidence of any such tendency. I maintain that the differences that have from time to time arisen have come about mainly from causes so far beyond our ken, that we can only call them spontaneous; and if so, natural selection which you must allow to have at any rate played an important part in the _accumulation_ of variations, must also be allowed to be the nearest thing to the cause of Specific differences, which we are able to arrive at.”